Steve Ellner's Blog on Venezuela, Latin America and Beyond

The centralization of ownership of the private media in the United States and elsewhere has become increasingly pronounced, at the same time that its reporting has become increasingly one-sided and monolithic. My blog seeks to expose this lack of objectivity and present alternative ideas that point in the direction of much-needed fundamental change.

Alvaro
García Linera, twice-elected vice-president of Bolivia, is the continent’s most
prominent theoretician-politician to place “twenty-first century Latin American
left” thought in a Marxist framework. All but one of the book’s ten chapters
were previously published, between 1998 and 2005. Their topics include Marxism,
the indigenous movement, social movements, the labor movement and the state. In
spite of the time span, the essays present a consistent whole.

García
Linera’s thinking represents a synthesis of Marxism, with its class analysis
and structural focus, and indigenismo (“Indianism”),
based on the celebration of longstanding indigenous cultural practices and
communitarian relationships. García Linera’s own trajectory reflects the
convergence of Marxist and indigenous components. As an activist in the
Katarista guerrilla movement, he was captured, tortured and jailed for five
years in the 1990s. The Kataristas put forward an indigenista critique of the leadership of the nation’s 1952
revolution as well as the traditional left. According to this view, which
García Linera articulates throughout the book, the revolutionary government
after 1952 sacrificed purely indigenous demands and aspirations in order to
promote modernization and assimilation.

In
addition to indigenismo, García
Linera became a leading advocate of Marxism, which he studied extensively
during his stay in prison, beginning with a close reading of Capital. While an adamant critic of the
traditional left, García Linera points to the emergence in the 1990s of a
“dialogue, admittedly tense, between the Indianist current and…
critical-Marxist intellectual currents” (315). He ends the book by asserting
that this “mutual enrichment” is likely to produce “the most important
emancipatory conceptions of society in Bolivia in the twenty-first century”
(321).

García
Linera not only helped bring together indigenismo
and Marxism, but also served as a “bridge” (as the introductory essay by
journalist Pablo Stefanoni puts it) between the peasant and indigenous
populations, on the one hand, and the urban middle class on the other. For this
reason, Evo Morales selected him as his running mate in 2005. In reaching out
to urban sectors, García Linera distanced himself from the more extreme indigenista position represented by
Felipe Quispe, a former Katarista leader who called for the Indianization of
Bolivian society and an indigenous-led Bolivian government. García Linera sees
Morales’ Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) party as a realistic alternative to
Quispe’s approach in that MAS favored “an electoral route of gradual,
institutional changes” (280). Indeed, just days after becoming vice-president
in 2005, García Linera called MAS a party of the “center-left.”

García
Linera analyzes in detail the social impact of the economic transformations in
Bolivia beginning in the 1980s. During these years, large-scale export-oriented
agriculture along with the hydrocarbon industry, both located in the eastern
lowlands, displaced tin mining and agricultural production for internal
consumption. This shift, along with neoliberal practices such as outsourcing
and downsizing, fragmented, dispersed and reduced the size of the traditional
industrial working class, and all but crippled the formerly powerful workers’
confederation, the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB). The resultant subjective
conditions in Bolivia, as in the rest of the world in the age of globalization,
were conducive not to workers’ combativeness but rather “conservative
consciousness” and “bargaining over the concessions and rights framing their
subordination” (45). García Linera’s pessimism regarding the prospects for
socialist revolution during the current period rests on his acceptance of the
Marxist premise regarding the decisive role played by the proletariat acting
from within the system of production. Not surprisingly, he refers to the “long
process” of thoroughgoing change, which begins in “each labor center” (75).

At the
time of the 2005 elections, García Linera declared that “Andean capitalism” and
not socialism was destined to become the dominant economic system in Bolivia in
the twenty-first century. Some leftists sharply criticized him for relegating
socialism to the far-distant future, but he was hardly defending capitalism
dominated by monopoly or multinational corporations. He points out that
family-based economic structures generate 70 percent of the nation’s urban
employment, while a large percentage of the rural work force is based on
communitarian relations. Thus the state needs to “coordinate in a balanced way”
the community-based economy (in the countryside), family-based production and
the modern industrial sector, rather than prioritize the latter as it has up
until now. According to this vision, the state allocates hydrocarbon-derived
revenue to facilitate self-managed enterprises, which are the essence of what García
Linera calls “Andean” and “Amazonian” capitalism.

Although
pessimistic regarding current proletarian struggles, García Linera highlights
the revolutionary potential of the indigenous population. Through most of the
twentieth century and especially after 1952, labor unions and other social
movements espoused “mestizo ideology” and were the “product of the economic
modernization of the business elites” (270). In contrast, by the end of the
twentieth century, the movements “with the greatest power to challenge the
political order” in Bolivia were those of the rural-based indigenous population
outside of the modern economy. Especially significant for García Linera is that
indigenous voters, who had traditionally supported mestizo politicians, voted “en masse for Indians” in the 2002
elections (275), and that social leaders now tend to be indigenous while
political movements on the left are indigenous-led. He also considers the
“predominantly political and ethno-national nature” (313) of rural struggles in
the early twenty-first century a positive development, especially when compared
to the economic focus of the peasant struggles of previous decades.

García
Linera’s pessimism regarding the proletariat and optimism regarding the
indigenous population have to be placed in the context of globalization.
Writing during the heyday of neoliberalism in the 1990s, García Linera rejected
the technological determinism defended by neoliberals who asserted that recent
advances in technology and organization had a predetermined outcome. In this
vein, he attempted to refute the “conservative and pseudo-leftist arguments”
emerging from the “framework that fetishizes technology” (30). Defenders of
technological determinism of both neoliberal and mechanical Marxist varieties
tend to denigrate the importance of indigenous community organization and
subsistence agriculture as well as the struggles of the indigenous population,
which they consider to be anachronistic. In effect, for García Linera the
technical changes associated with globalization weakened the working class and
thus ruled out socialism in the near future, but did not signify the
predominance of any specific capitalist model. In championing “Andean
capitalism,” García Linera supported a very different type of capitalism than
that of the multinational-dominated global economy that the neoliberals claimed
was inevitable on grounds “there is no alternative” (TINA).

García
Linera identifies himself with a “new left” in Bolivia that emerged at the turn
of the century and that according to him had little in common with the old
left. Throughout the book, he lashes out at the nation’s traditional left for
its “modernist” worldview that “created a cognitive block and an
epistemological impossibility with respect to two realities – Bolivia’s campesino and ethnic issue” (308). In
putting forward this critique, he fails to establish distinctions between
different parties or currents on the left. While the criticism is more valid
with regard to the social democratic Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario
(MNR), which spearheaded the 1952 revolution, than to Marxist left groups,
García Linera lumps them all together. Surprisingly the book makes no mention
of Peruvian communist leader José Carlos Mariátegui, who viewed the Inca heritage
and indigenous communitarian practices as assets in the struggle for socialism.
Throughout the book, the dogmatic left becomes a straw man, as García Linera
states or implies that leftists in general adhere to reductionist and
positivist notions. An example is his assertion that the “Marxist Left”
expressed contempt for the peasantry and “identified the agrarian reality as an
indicator of the ‘backwardness’ that would have to give way to the ‘progress’
of industry.” He adds that “agriculture appeared to be a liability for the
subjects of the social revolution – the proletarians – who had to find the best
way to ‘drag along’ the small landholders” (308). Elsewhere García Linera makes
reference to “the condescending attention that the Left awarded to the
indigenous movement” (151).

García
Linera’s celebration of the demands of the indigenous population and its
community-based economy makes him very much a “twenty-first century Latin
American left” thinker. Indeed, one of the distinguishing characteristics of
the twenty-first century Latin American left is its prioritization of
marginalized sectors as opposed to the proletariat. Hugo Chávez, for instance,
declared that as president he was committed to acting on behalf of Venezuelans
of all classes, but that he extended priority treatment to the very poor
because they needed his help the most. Liberation theology, which exerted a
major influence on the twenty-first century Latin American left, preached a
similar message and claimed it was embodied in the bible.

García
Linera, like other twenty-first century leftists, envisions a clear break with
the past. The problem with their narrative is that it fails to establish a
meaningful contrast between reformist and neoliberal governments. A more
nuanced analysis is in order. A more rigorous account of the positive and
negative features of the different leftist groups in Bolivia would go a long
way toward placing the rise of the twenty-first century left in historical
perspective.

Thursday, January 19, 2017

ARTICLE OF MINE PUBLISHED IN THE LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION (LASA) NEWSLETTER

Winter 2017 Issue

In the article I argue that the characterization of Venezuela as a “failed
state” facing a “humanitarian crisis” intensifies political polarization, plays
into the hands of the opposition’s radical fringe, and hinders efforts, promoted
by Pope Francisco, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and others, to establish a
national dialogue over pressing issues

Thursday, January 5, 2017

HAVE OBAMA DO WHAT EISENHOWER SHOULD HAVE DONE 65 YEARS AGO: EXONERATE ETHEL ROSENBERG

Read this moving
interview with Robert Meeropol, the son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and then
sign the petition calling on Obama to exonerate his mother. The proof of her
innocence is overwhelming; beginning with the fact that her main
accusers (her brother and sister-in-law) swore in their grand jury testimony
that she was completely innocent, only to change their story later on. This,
according to Meeropol (based on documents), was due to pressure from, among
others, the notorious Roy Cohen, the pathological liar and mentor to Donald
Trump. KGP files assigned code names to both accusers but not to her. Listen to
the interview and then sign the petition. https://www.democracynow.org/2017/1/4/part_2_robert_meeropol_on_trump

About Me

Steve Ellner has taught economic history at the Universidad de Oriente in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela since 1977. He is the author of numerous books and journal and magazine articles on Venezuela history and politics. He frequently lectures on Venezuela and Latin American political developments in the U.S. and elsewhere. He received his Ph.D. in Latin American history at the University of New Mexico in 1980.